Make Your Mailman Nervous With A Wifi Enabled Mailbox

April 5, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 43 Comments

“It’s not a bomb,” the mailman whispered to himself as he reached for [atxguitarist]’s mailbox, giving a nervous glance at the small black box stuck to the side. “This is THAT house, it’s not a bomb. I’m sure it’s not a bomb,” he muttered as a cold bead of sweat ran down his neck. His hand approached slowly, shakily. The mailman gathered courage, then, in a single quick movement, opened the box. He sighed relief as nothing happened. Somewhere in [atxguitarist]’s house a recording wailed “You’ve got mail!”

The mailbox enhancement in question is a hacked Amazon Dash Button in a project box. When the door of the mailbox is opened, a magnetic reed switch simulates a button press on the Dash. The Dash transmodulates the signal into WiFi pixies which are received by a Raspberry Pi. The Pi’s sole purpose in life is to run a 24-line Python script that plays the famous sound from AOL’s mail software and sends a notification to his phone.

Aside from unnerving the mailman, it’s a cool hack and keeps you from slugging it out there in the cold or rain to witness an empty box.

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Google’s OnHub Goes Toe To Toe With Amazon Echo

August 19, 2015 by Mike Szczys 46 Comments

Yesterday Google announced preorders for a new device called OnHub. Their marketing, and most of the coverage I’ve seen so far, touts OnHub as a better WiFi router than you are used to including improved signal, ease of setup, and a better system to get your friends onto your AP (using the ultrasonic communication technique we’ve also seen on the Amazon Dash buttons). Why would Google care about this? I don’t think they do, at least not enough to develop and manufacture a $199.99 cylindrical monolith. Nope, this is all about the Internet of Things, as much as it pains me to use the term.

OnHub boasts an array of “smart antennas” connected to its various radios. It has the 2.4 and 5 Gigahertz WiFi bands in all the flavors you would expect. The specs also show an AUX Wireless for 802.11 whose purpose is not entirely clear to me but may be the network congestion sensing built into the system (leave a comment if you think otherwise). Rounding out the communications array is support for ZigBee and Bluetooth 4.0.

I have long looked at Google’s acquisition of Nest and assumed that at some point Nest would become the Router for your Internet of Things, collecting data from your exercise equipment and bathroom scale which would then be sold to your health insurance provider so they may adjust your rates. I know, that’s a juicy piece of Orwellian hyperbole but it gets the point across rather quickly. The OnHub is a much more eloquent attempt at the same thing. Some people were turned off by the Nest because it “watches” you to learn your heating preferences. The same issue has arisen with the Amazon Echo which is “always listening”.

Google has foregone those built-in futuristic features and chosen a device to which almost everyone has already grown accustom: the WiFi router. They promise better WiFi and I’m sure it will deliver. What’s the average age of a home WiFi AP at this point anyway? Any new hardware would be an improvement. Oh, and when you start buying those smart bulbs, fridges, bathroom scales, egg trays, and whatever else it’ll work for them as well.

As far as hacking and home automation, it’s hard to beat the voice-activated commands we’ve seen with Echo lately, like forcing it to control Nest or operate your Roku. Who wants to bet that we’ll see a Google-Now based IoT standalone device quickly following the shipment of OnHub?

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Hands On: AD409-Max Microscope

May 22, 2024 by Al Williams 18 Comments

It used to be that only the most well-equipped home electronics lab had a microscope. However, with SMD parts getting smaller and smaller, some kind of microscope is almost a necessity.

Luckily, you can get USB microscopes for a song now. If you’re willing to spend a little more, you can get even get microscopes that have little LCD screens. However, there are some problems with the cheaper end of these microscopes.

Many of them have small and wobbly stands that aren’t very practical. Some don’t leave you much room to get a soldering iron in between the lens and the part. Worse still, many cheap microscopes have trouble staying still when you have to push buttons or otherwise make adjustments to the device.

It seems like every time a new generation of microscopes aimed at the electronics market arrives on the scene, many of the earlier flaws get taken care of. That’s certainly the case with the Andonstar AD409-Max.

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Our Home Automation Contest Starts Now!

February 20, 2024 by Elliot Williams 32 Comments

Your home is your castle, and what’s better than a fully automatic castle? Nothing! That’s why we’re inviting you to submit your sweetest home automation hacks for a chance to win one of three $150 DigiKey gift certificates. The contest starts now and runs until April 16th.

Home buttons project, simple home automation display — [Matej]’s Home Buttons gets the job done in open-source style.

We love to play around with home automation setups and have seen our fair share, ranging from the simple “turn some lights on” to full-blown cyber-brains that learn your habits and adapt to them. Where is your project on this continuum?

Whether you’re focused on making your life easier, saving energy, gathering up all the data about your usage patterns, or simply stringing some random functions together and calling it a “system,” we’d like to see it. Nothing is too big or too small if it makes your home life easier.

Home is where the home automation is!

To enter, head over to Hackaday IO and start documenting your project there. We are, of course, interested in learning from what you’ve done, so the better the docs, the better your chances of winning. And if you need some inspiration, check out these honorable mention categories.

Honorable Mention Categories

Creature Comforts: Does your system make your house a home? Maybe it turns on and off the heaters to keep rooms just right, opens and closes the blinds for you, or maybe it turns on the nightlights when you’re heading downstairs for a midnight snack. The Creature Comforts category is for you.
Efficiency: Automation isn’t just about convenience, but can help us save energy too. If your machines help you save money on your power and heating bills, show us!
Rube Goldberg: A “system” sounds so formal, but a lot of ad hoc home automation projects are nonetheless super effective. If your home system grew organically and maybe resembles a collection of hacks more than a carefully orchestrated plan, it could be a Rube Goldberg setup.
All the Data: An automatic home makes a lot of data along the way. If you have a slick system for displaying it, or even just collecting it all, we’d love to see it.
Retrofit: Not everything works like you’d want it to out of the box. Maybe you’ve hacked into an air purification system or your washing machine to get it to play along? That’s a home automation retrofit.

Thanks again to DigiKey for sponsoring this with three gift certificates!

Hackaday Links: February 11, 2024

February 11, 2024 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

Apple’s Vision Pro augmented reality goggles made a big splash in the news this week, and try as we might to resist the urge to dunk on them, early adopters spotted in the wild are making it way too easy. Granted, we’re not sure how many of these people are actually early adopters as opposed to paid influencers, but there was still quite a bit of silliness to be had, most of it on X/Twitter. We’d love to say that peak idiocy was achieved by those who showed themselves behind the wheels of their Teslas while wearing their goggles, with one aiming for an early adopter perfecta, but alas, most of these stories appear to be at least partially contrived. Some people were spotted doing their best to get themselves killed, others were content to just look foolish, especially since we’ve heard that the virtual keyboard is currently too slow for anything but hunt-and-peck typing, which Casey Niestat seemed to confirm with his field testing. After seeing all this, we’re still unsure why someone would strap $4,000 worth of peripheral-vision-restricting and easily fenced hardware to their heads, but hey — different strokes. And for those of you wondering why these things are so expensive, we’ve got you covered.

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Hands On With Boondock Echo

November 10, 2023 by Dan Maloney 23 Comments

Perhaps no words fill me with more dread than, “I hear there’s something going around.” In my experience, you hear this when some nasty bug has worked its way into the community and people start getting whatever it is. I’m always on my guard when I hear about something like this, especially when it’s something really unpleasant like norovirus. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.

Since I work from home and rarely get out, one of the principal ways I keep apprised of what’s going on with public health in my community is by listening to my scanner radio. I have the local fire rescue frequencies programmed in, and if “there’s something going around,” I usually find out about it there first; after a half-dozen or so calls for people complaining of nausea and vomiting, you get the idea it’s best to hunker down for a while.

I manage to stay reasonably well-informed in this way, but it’s not like I can listen to my scanner every minute of the day. That’s why I was really excited when my friend Mark Hughes started a project he called Boondock Echo, which aims to change the two-way radio communications user experience by enabling internet-backed recording and playback. It sounded like the perfect system for me — something that would let my scanner work for me, instead of the other way around. And so when Mark asked me to participate in the beta test, I jumped at the chance.

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Hackaday Prize 2023: Meet The Assistive Tech Finalists

July 19, 2023 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

If you’re still toiling away at your entry for the Gearing Up Challenge of the 2023 Hackaday Prize, don’t panic! No, you haven’t lost track of time — due to some technical difficulties we had to delay the final judging for the Assistive Tech Challenge that ended May 30th.

Today we’re pleased to announce that all the votes are in, and we’re ready to unveil the ten projects that our panel of judges felt best captured the spirit of this very important challenge. Each of these projects will take home $500 and move on to the final round of judging. There are few more noble pursuits than using your talents to help improve the lives of others, so although we could only pick ten finalists, we’d like to say a special thanks to everyone who entered this round.

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